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Scuttlebutt

Payment (Still) Past Due

The Louisiana Ethics Board has begun collection
procedures against dozens of politicians and political organizations (PACs) who
allegedly owe the state treasury thousands of dollars in fines for campaign finance
violations.

"We are in the process of engaging an attorney
to try and move forward with those collections [against] sitting officials or
candidates who have not paid," says Maris LeBlanc, a staff attorney for
the ethics board.

And there's more bad news for political debtors
who are currently campaigning for the Oct. 4 primary election. Candidates who
spend campaign funds while still owing the ethics board fines or fees are subject
to civil penalties of up to 200 percent of the expenditure of $1,000, according
to a state law passed in 2001 and authored by state Rep. Steve Scalise,
R-Metairie.

Among the alleged debtors listed on the ethics
board Web site are three candidates and two influential political organizations
active in metro area campaigns in the Oct. 4 primary election. They are:

· Keith T. Johnson, an incumbent
member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who has been
assessed $1,000 in late fees for supplemental reports from campaigns in 1999
and 1995. Johnson did not return a call for comment by press time.

· Rufus Johnson, a candidate in
the crowded House District 98 race, allegedly owes $1,020 for late filings from
a 1999 campaign. Johnson did not return calls for comment.

· Renee Washington, a former deputy
sheriff campaigning for sheriff of Jefferson Parish, acknowledges she owes the
state $1,700 for late filings from her unsuccessful 1999 campaign for the office.
"That was on an error on my part -- trusting my campaign treasurer," Washington
says. "I'm going to pay the fine as I do obtain the funds."

· Development Association of Wards &
Neighborhoods (DAWN), a political organization chaired by Johnny Jackson
Jr. , a former New Orleans councilman and state representative who is running
for clerk of Criminal Court in Orleans Parish. The ethics board asserts that
DAWN owes the state $15,800 in fees for repeated late filings of campaign reports
in 2002. "Whatever we have to do to rectify it, we will," says Jackson. "It
(DAWN) is something I am associated with and I am going to get it straight."

· The Community Organization for Urban
Politics (COUP), another influential political organization in New Orleans,
owes the state $19,400 for repeated filings from the 2002 citywide elections,
ethics board attorneys say. The campaign treasurer did not return a call by
press time.

In a separate board action, the Treme Improvement
Political Society (TIPS), an influential PAC associated with state Rep. Ed
Murray, got its fine reduced from $34,500 to $2,500 -- with a condition.
The Ethics Board voted 9-0 to roll back the fine after a clemency request from
Murray, who appeared before the panel at its regular meeting on Sept. 11 in
Baton Rouge.

Officials for TIPS, which has blown campaign
finance reporting deadlines in previous elections, told the ethics board they
have hired a professional accounting firm. Murray assured the board the PAC
is on the right track. The ethics board warned Murray -- a trial lawyer -- and
TIPS that the fee reduction was contingent upon future compliance with campaign
reporting laws. "If for some reason the reports are not timely filed in the
future, then the remaining $30,000 can be resurrected," ethics board staff attorney
Kathleen Allen said.

In the Jefferson Parish Council District 2
race, attorney Vinny Mosca is running catchy campaign television commercials
in which he invites voters to call him at home to find how what he's really like.
But there is more to the spot than meets the eye -- and ear.

The spots show Mosca in the city of Harahan
on the East Bank, where he served as a mayor and councilman. He also appears
in front of his family's famous Italian restaurant on the West Bank.

Mosca (generally pronounced MAH-ska) asks
viewers to remember him on the Oct. 4 primary election ballot, and pronounces
his name "MOH-ska."

"MOH-ska?" we asked Mosca at a campaign forum
last week.

"That's how they say it on the West Bank,"
said Mosca, who says he is trying to appeal to West Bank voters. District 2
is roughly divided between the East Bank and the West Bank. Mosca is the only
Democrat in the race and his political base is on the East Bank. -- Johnson

Money to Blow

"Blowing the whistle" on corporate or government
corruption may not be as thankless as it's cracked up to be. Three annual $10,000
awards, named for the late New Orleans investigative journalist (and former Gambit
Weekly reporter) Ron Ridenhour, have been established by the Fertel
Foundation and The Nation Institute to recognize those who risk professional and
personal backlash to expose the truth.

The first Ridenhour Awards will be bestowed
Oct. 15 at the Press Club in Washington. The Ron Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling
will go to American diplomat Joseph Wilson, who challenged President
George W. Bush's assertion in his State of the Union speech that Iraq
had been soliciting large amounts of uranium from Africa. The Ron Ridenhour
Book Prize will be awarded to investigative reporter Deborah Scroggins,
whose book Emma's War: An Aid Worker, a Warlord, Radical Islam, and the Politics
of Oil sheds light on the complex relationship between the West and war-torn
Sudan.

The Ron Ridenhour Courage Award goes to Daniel
Ellsberg, the former Department of Defense employee who leaked the "Pentagon
Papers." Exposure of the secret government study of the United States' involvement
in Vietnam set in motion a torrential First Amendment court battle between the
government and the media. It also revealed the government's attempts to conceal
its mistakes from the public.

Ridenhour, who died in 1998 at age 52, was
an award-winning journalist best known for exposing the infamous My Lai massacre
in Vietnam. His legacy has been kept alive in part through his friend, writer
Randy Fertel, president of the Fertel Foundation and son of the late
Ruth's Chris founder Ruth Fertel.